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"Alright, Paris," Billy conceded, no matter how much he wanted to puch him in the face right now, "I'll work around your schedule," Princess, he mentally added in the most sarcastic tone possible.

And then Paris had the gall to, from Billy's view, guilt trip Ladon? It took a lot for Billy not to say something. Billy tried to keep his relaxed position against the wall, but couldn't help just the slightest narrowing of his eyes and the twitch of the muscles in his arms as he fought the urge to once again punch the boy.

Then when Paris left Billy thought for a moment. Should he say something, or should he not? If he said something to Ladon would he brush him off and force him to leave? Yell at him? If he didn't would Ladon think he didn't care?

"I'm sorry. You didn't deserve to be talked to that way..." Billy finally said, apologizing on Paris' behalf, and for his own slip ups as well as Ladon ran about getting dressed.

He had tried but Ladon knew Paris brought out the worst in him. But it shouldn't have been asking too much for him just to be...civil. Billy knew this, and his expression showed just how disappointed he was in himself for potentially letting Ladon down, and for letting Ladon end up possibly hurt in the process...

Before he knew it Ladon was dressed, kissing his cheek, and out the door.

Billy sighed and threw himself down on the bed, mindful of Sammy, sill curled up in the blankets. How she never suffocated he did not know... All Billy knew was that he was extremely...angry at himself. And he was content to wallow in his self-hate right there for a while.

Pink eyes stared at some distant place on the wall until he wasn't even mindful that he was staring at anything. If there was anything to be relieved about at the moment it was that Ladon hadn't seemed angry with him before he left the room.

While it was intentional or not, Ladon visibly winced at the blind metaphor, and he looked away, fingers curling into fists as he tried to hold any snarky remarks in out of hurt. It was just a turn of phrase. He wasn't being literal. It was a subject best not to even be touched upon, but he felt that pointing it out was such a small thing compared to other issues, and such a small thing to nitpick on.

Once he felt capable, he looked back at Paris. "I wasn't having sex in there. I take something to help me sleep, and I feel asleep after I took a shower. Showers also help me sleep. If you want to talk to me about....that, I can talk to you about it. I just...." He just didn't want to. ".....don't feel that it's all that important." More that he had such a bad experience with it that he'd rather not tell Paris about it and hear a lecture. To be told he was an idiot and made a mistake. It still hurt inside.

"..and all I saw back there was you two hating each other. Billy came in because he's protective and he heard you saying his name. He does that." Billy guarded him after all, and Ladon liked the security, but other times he disliked being coddled. He was a general after all and had lived alone without Billy. When he was treated as if he was frail, it reminded him of being home.

"You can't expect me to be at the top of my game when everyone comes into my room when I'm just waking up and naked." Now he was just defending himself.

Speaking of, he was feeling tired still - the result of sleeping in too much. His body was hungry for rest and didn't know that sleeping for hours wasn't going to help the abuse he put his body through the past few weeks.

"I'm giving Billy a chance. I know he was an a*****e. It's why I threw him out. I know he can lie. He did it to my face for weeks. I am giving him a chance, but I'm very aware he can fool me. I'll only have myself to blame in the end if things don't turn out, but.....there is just part of Billy you don't know. That's why I'm letting him have this chance. He was here when I was going through some really terrible stuff, and he's protected me before. I'm giving him a little bit of credit for that." More credit than that. Billy had saved him from the torture cells, stayed with him through his flashes of insanity, and when he was kicked out of his apartment, still saved him from a strike from a senshi. If he couldn't give him a chance at dating again, he'd feel like a cold b*****d.

"I just really want the two most important people in my life to be able to drop by my apartment and not be at each other's throats."

He sighed and then looked at the sandwich. "I think that lunch meat is expired." His fridge was rather sad.

Billy lay on the bed in the bedroom, visually zoned out, but listening all the same.

He sighed.

If Paris hadn't come in and been an a** about the TV, insulting his age and the show he enjoyed, he probably wouldn't have started any argument. From where he stood, it was all Paris' fault!

And now Paris was going to take it upon himself to go and fill Ladon's fridge and cabinets... It was an insult to Billy's pride, his ability to provide for his boyfriend... At least that's how he felt. It made him sick. He was working on getting a job so he could provide, though. Billy couldn't help the circumstances that had severely crippled his monetary earnings... In fact, he was a little pissed at the Negaverse for this, but he could see the reasons why they were implementing these new things...

However, Billy was reaching in to his meager savings now just for the bus rides here and back to his apartment... And he had medical bills to pay, as well. He wanted to provide for Ladon, but right now that was something he was having to trust Ladon to do for himself...

“I don’t think you’re brittle,” Paris replied. His voice was markedly lower as his passionate anger waned. “I think you've been through a lot and you're still struggling to get over it, and that's okay, but I wish you'd do a better job of showing that you can take care of yourself sometimes. You can’t blame me for worrying when this is how you live.”

He swept one arm through the air as if to indicate the entirety of the apartment, but it wasn’t the building that concerned him so much as the fact that Ladon barely seemed to leave it, or the fact that he let his food spoil and didn’t even take the time to throw it out when he already knew it was bad. For someone who insisted on being able to take care of themselves, Paris hadn’t seen much proof of it recently. He knew there were reasons for it of course, but it had been a while since then and he hadn’t seen enough improvement to assuage his concern.

“How are you even sure you’re ready for a relationship again? And with Billy of all people? It wasn’t exactly easy last time, and now with you being…” he trailed off. He wasn’t a doctor—or a mind-reader—so he couldn’t say for certain what was going on in Ladon’s head. He had suspicions, though he’d never voiced them. “I mean, you’ve been sort of… depressed. You take pills to help you sleep, you can’t be eating much if your food’s going bad, and how often do you even go out? I’ll stand back if this is what you want, and I’ll believe you when you say you know what you’re doing, but if this doesn’t end the way you want it to and it just makes things worse for you… I’ll want to be there to help.”

Paris joined him at the island and leaned against it with his arms crossed over top. He felt bad for getting so out of hand, even if he didn’t think anything he’d said had been wrong. He still could have worded it differently. He could have done something to settle himself before blowing up, and then maybe this visit wouldn’t have lapsed into an argument.

Maybe he took some things too personally still. Maybe he was still just trying to prove that he was worth the drama and the aggravation, because when it came down to it he really did care.

“That’s the only reason I came over,” he admitted. “I knew I wasn’t going to be able to change anything, even if I wish I could sometimes. I just… want to be there… if you need me.” He paused to shrug. “Maybe I go a bit overboard sometimes. I can’t really help it. I care about you, and sometimes I want you to need me.”

Paris stared at Ladon with a “you seriously expect me to believe you?” look on his face, eyebrows raised while his mouth curved down into a very obvious frown. He wanted to argue again. He really, really did. There was no way he would believe that Ladon was as fine as he claimed to be with the way he seemed to be living. He was better, perhaps, than he’d been a handful of months ago. He even looked a little better now than he had at Christmas, but it wasn’t enough—not for Paris and, he hoped, not for any of the other people who cared about Ladon.

Yet he said nothing. He clamped his mouth shut and stood there in silence and willed himself not to start in on it again. Ladon was clearly done with that conversation. Any further pushing and Paris risked disrupting the temporary truce. He didn’t want that. He was tired of arguing for one day. Now he just wanted to end this visit as peacefully as he could, with the intent of trying again some other time.

“I’ll eat whatever you want,” he said with another shrug, quickly glancing over the flyers Ladon brought over. “Sandwiches, Chinese, pizza, it doesn’t matter. I’m still going shopping for you, though. Don’t make me start planning out all your meals. I’ll totally do it.”

He doubted it’d be worth it, though, since he wouldn’t be there every second of every day to make sure Ladon actually ate them instead of just throwing them in the trash.

Paris sighed to himself and dropped his head onto the island with a soft ‘thunk.’ “I suppose we should tell Billy we’re eating,” he mumbled. He’d much rather have Billy leave, but he suspected that was even less likely than Ladon keeping his fridge appropriately stocked. A moment later, Paris lifted his head again. His expression had taken on something of a sour pout. “I’ll even be nice and pay.”

A small courtesy, but it was something.

Paris didn’t miss the sentence Ladon left hanging there while he looked for the time, but he chose not to say anything about it. He figured it was more important that Ladon was actually getting some sleep than it was when he decided to sleep. Everything wasn’t going to be solved all at once. It was best to let Ladon take one step at a time in the right direction. Sleep first. Adjusting the sleep schedule to something a little more normal could come later.

Taking the pen, Paris let his eyes peruse the appropriate menu before circling a selection of sesame chicken. Chinese food was not his favorite choice of a meal by any means, but without anything in the apartment to make they were only left with so many choices, and he definitely preferred this alternative over cheap burgers and most pizza places.

“Oh, yeah, you can come,” he agreed, looking up from the menu with a sudden smile. “It’d be better if you picked out the stuff you’ll actually eat anyway, so long as it’s actually something substantial. But I’m going to pay,” Paris reminded him. “It’s no big deal, I promise. I’ve pretty much got two jobs anyway, so I have plenty of money saved up, and I’d rather spend some of it like this than waste it on things I don’t really need. Making sure you eat is clearly more important than buying another pair of shoes.”

He was saving up for school, of course, but he only planned on having to pay for a semester or two, provided he’d actually passed the GED exam and got accepted into DCU this late in the year. After that, he hoped to be able to land enough scholarships to cover the rest.

“If there’s anything you really need, go ahead and write it down so we don’t forget it. Otherwise we can just walk up and down each aisle and you can pick whatever you want. I should probably get more laundry detergent while we’re out. Chris was running out last time I was over,” he said this more to himself, but the thought of his boyfriend served as something of a reminder, and he looked at Ladon with a bit of an apologetic expression on his face.

“What Billy said earlier… about going out together… I didn’t just blow him off because I was angry and trying to be difficult,” he said. “I mean, there really is a lot going on, but I’ll figure out a weekend when work or dance won’t get in the way and we can go out, okay? Chris won’t mind. We need to spend more time around other people anyway. Most days we just sit in his apartment doing our own thing or watching movies together.”